my professional life requires me to give more and more presentations, talks at conferences, video conferences and so forth. there is only one way to become an excellent speaker: relentless practice. trouble is, there is not always a willing audience. or maybe there is, after all. ingredients:

• a webcam (starting at $30)
• serious magic
• plenty of space and bandwidth

besides doing education or promotion videos, video blogging is an obvious application. if you want to eschew the strictness of a script, do the stream of consciousness thing and just ramble.